This is going to be a big one. Now you can post messages, to-do lists, files, and text documents to the all new Basecamp just by sending an email.
First, some background
In Basecamp Classic, you can post a new message by sending an email directly to Basecamp. This feature is especially useful if you’re on the road and want to post a message to the project from your phone. Just fire up your email app, address the email to Basecamp, and it’s immediately posted as a message to the project.
Initially, the all new Basecamp didn’t launch with this feature. Like everything else in the new Basecamp, we wanted to approach it fresh, take our time to think it through, explore a variety of ideas, and make it even better than before.
Better than before
In Classic you could only post a message via email. You couldn’t make a to-do list, start a text document (called Writeboards in Classic), or upload a file via email.
But in the all new Basecamp, you can do all these things and more. Plus, it’s easier, clearer, and more powerful than before.
Here’s how it works
At the bottom right corner of every project you’ll see a link that says “Email content to this project”.
When you click that link, you’ll see a sheet pop up that looks like this:
You’ll see five icons at the top of the page. Each icon describes a different email-in feature. Starting discussions, making to-do lists, creating documents, uploading files, and forwarding emails. Clicking any one of those icons shows you the simple steps to follow for each feature.
Below the steps we show an example of an email and how that content will look when it’s posted to Basecamp.
When Basecamp receives your email and posts your content to the project, it immediately sends you an email receipt letting you know it worked.
For most content types, the email also includes a link to let you notify others on the project letting them know that you just added something to the project. If you click that link you’ll see:
Since we expect a lot of people to email in from their mobile phones, we made a mobile optimized version of the notifications screen too:
And a bonus feature
In addition to allowing you to start discussions, make to-do lists, create text documents, and upload files via email, we also allow you to forward in any existing email to Basecamp. This is especially useful if there was a conversation going on outside of Basecamp. Just forward that email thread into Basecamp and it’s stored along with everything else on the project. Easy peasy.
Forwarded emails get collected into a “Forwarded emails” section at the bottom of the project.
And if the email was an HTML email, we show the full HTML email, too:
So many uses
There are so many interesting ways to use this new email-in feature in Basecamp.
One of the things I’ve loved about it so far is that I can sketch an idea on the whiteboard/chalkboard in a meeting room in our office, take a picture of it with my iPhone, and email it directly to a Basecamp project. It’s such a great way to get the physical results of a brainstorm, meeting, or sketch session right into Basecamp. And now that it’s in Basecamp, I can erase the whiteboard and not worry about ever losing that idea.
Email-in is also a great little “poor-man’s API”. You can have your apps send emails direct into Basecamp whenever you make a sale, get survey results from a customer, or who knows what. The opportunities are endless. We’re eager to see what sorts of things people come up with.
Thanks again
We’re thrilled with the feature and we think you’ll feel the same way. Thanks again for using Basecamp!
Sérgio Santos
on 01 May 12Can you share the percentage of user who actually use email-in features? (I’m curious to know if it’s too small to be a priority for the usual MVP.)
Frank Savens
on 01 May 12@37signals
If I can do all of this from email, then why even USE Basecamp to begin with then?
My concern is that if I condition my employees to interact with Basecamp via email then they won’t even log into Basecamp at all to even use the product then.
Essentially, I view simply emailing todo as the biggest competitive reason to NOT pay and use Basecamp at all since I can largely accomplish all the functionality of Basecamp with just organized emailing.
You might have just opened pandoras box with this functionality.
Syrek_
on 01 May 12First I was like: Wow! 37s is taking a shot at email, goodbye gmail! Then I was like: Ow …
But to be honest, this is nice 2 :P
JF
on 01 May 12Frank: For a variety of reasons, but one of which is about keeping everything together in one place. Projects need a home base. Your inbox isn’t someone else’s inbox isn’t someone else’s inbox. People’s email habits are widely varied. When stuff is scattered all over the place between people, things quickly become disorganized and it becomes hard to tell who’s doing what, where things are, who’s responsible for this or that, what’s been doing, and what’s left to do. Further, tons of people use Basecamp as a repository for everything project related. Emails are project related so keeping them together with the rest of your project in Basecamp makes a whole lot of sense.
Dustin
on 01 May 12I’m noticing forwarded emails are getting truncated at certain punctuation marks (elipses and apostrophes so far). Standard punctuation ?!.,+= all seem fine.
Uzo
on 01 May 12Looks extremely good and appears well thought-out.
I wonder what the error handling is for making things like To-Dos. Would seriously suck if malformed To-Do email structure (by user error or email formatting) sent some mangled emails to BCX and resulted in weird looking To-Dos.
Also would be sweet if people are sent a “here’s how you do it from your email” feature when they are added to the project. It would make sense for people getting looped into projects, as well as people who are just not web-savvy. That way they can get their “access email address” as well as instructions on how to utilize it properly, right from their inbox.
Layman’s thoughts, really. I don’t know how practical or difficult it would be to implement these but I think there’s some value there, even if it means lazier souls won’t get to see the sweet interface you guys have built.
Thanks for sharing; I learn quite a lot from the tidbits you guys put out (especially Ryan Singer). Keep them coming!
Champ
on 01 May 12Yes, that’s good and all, but when’s private messages coming??
Michael Metts
on 01 May 12Is it possible to use the loop-in function on this feature?
Disappointed Dave
on 01 May 12Really? This was the feature you selected to implement over everything else that’s lacking? I’m with @Champ private messages are really needed.
I’m starting to wonder whether Basecamp Next is 37signals attempt at jumping the shark…
Daniel Genser
on 01 May 12This is alright, but for mobile contexts, I can’t help but feel like making some of the Basecamp screens optimized for mobile/small viewports isn’t a higher necessity. That’s the one huge thing that I REALLY miss about using Basecamp. It’s largely unusable on my iPhone. I realize the API has recently been published and I suppose third party apps will start showing up, but they won’t have been designed by 37S.
Greg E.
on 01 May 12@Disappointed Dave
Said another way, New Coke (BaseCamp) isn’t as good as Coca Cola Classic (BaseCamp classic).
Makes you wonder if 37signals will have to drop new BaseCamp for classic just like Coca Cola had to do years back.
Matt
on 01 May 12You do realize what this means though, right? We now have a way to create task templates and batch email them to a project. Just save a text file of your tasks, and email it to any of your new projects. It at least solves the immediate need until a better solution comes along.
Also, I wonder if seeing this hint of a single mobile view is indicative that 37s is really working on a mobile interface. They’re just pushing it out as they get it refined/finished.
Daniel Genser
on 01 May 12@matt I truly hope so. I think the new Basecamp UI is terrific and natural-feeling… on the desktop. On my phone it’s another story.
Zach
on 01 May 12Looks awesome! One styling note, that screen shot of “Who should Basecamp tell about Idea for a blog post?”—the border radius is inconsistent with the new BaseCamp in my opinion and shouldn’t be that round. It honestly feels like Classic currently.
Paul G
on 01 May 12As for me, this is the exact feature needed to keep using Basecamp Next in the org. Big thanks.
Guilherme Lundgren
on 01 May 12Hi Jason,
I’m wondering when will be launched the redesign of all your products. I’m a new customer (i started with basecamp new look), and i am completely in love with it, but when i tried your other apps, it looked VERY old to me, and i dont want to use them while it’s that way.
It’s just an insight from me, because if i felt that way, probably other people in the same situation (new customers that started off with the new look) feel the same.
Thanks
Shane
on 01 May 12This looks good – I like it. But I have to agree with Champ and Dave; this is far less important than private messages. Jason, you even said it yourself:
We want to keep everything in one place, and that includes all the internal private stuff as well. It’s easily the most used feature of Basecamp for us currently, and as the new one doesn’t support it we also can’t migrate projects at, effectively stopping us from upgrading. Very frustrating given how generally awesome the new Basecamp is.
Derek Ashauer
on 01 May 12Nothing like addressing the least used features of Classic Basecamp first. Not things like private messages or templates…
So what you’re saying is you are on the road and want to quickly create a new message. But wait, what is that unique, crazy email address I have to send it to? Hmm… let me login into Basecamp to find out what the email address is, close Basecamp, start a new email and send it off.
This feature never made sense in Classic Basecamp and still doesn’t in this iteration.
JF
on 01 May 12But wait, what is that unique, crazy email address I have to send it to? Hmm… let me login into Basecamp to find out what the email address is, close Basecamp, start a new email and send it off.
There’s a single link to download every project address right into your own address book (which you can sync to your mobile). You don’t have to remember the addresses – only the name of a project. Easy.
Kevin Gainey
on 02 May 12Thanks guys! Awesome work. I’m enjoying the new system, the speed and the clean interface.
DK
on 02 May 12Good addition but very flawed unfortunately. I’ve tried forwarding an email multiple times and it keeps only picking up the first couple sentences. It’s only some text with a few urls and a little but of formatting (colour and font basically).
I then copied it into a new email, pasted all the urls beside former links and told gmail to switch to plain text. Then and only then it worked but the font was nasty and hard to read.
Hope you guys really clean this up, I see a lot of value in it. We forward dozens of emails to highrise everyday.
JF
on 02 May 12DK, please file a ticket with support so we can dig in and find out what’s up. Thanks.
Kim Vigsbo
on 02 May 12New feature, not particularly useful for most people.
How about getting private messages back, so we can actually use the new application like we used the old version?
Having been a Basecamp user since 2006 I am disappointed to see how 37signals apparently have lost touch with their customer base.
So I can’t use new Basecamp since I use Writeboards (now called Text documents) for every project and every project has at least one private document and in classic Basecamp I am so tired of dealing with problems I have with clients/contractors linked to more than one project where they have to remember the specific login for each project.
Basecamp, I am not being productive – you are losing me – do something!
Mark P
on 02 May 12What happened to customizing the UI a bit for the agency look and feel? We like to brand ourselves, not Basecamp. No offense.
Give us a stylesheet to access ala ZenDesk. At a minimum, a company logo. A really simple feature that goes a long way in selling management, sales and marketing teams to pay and allow Basecamp to be used with high profile clients internally.
Like the new, but missing some real basic key features from the old.
JF
on 02 May 12I am disappointed to see how 37signals apparently have lost touch with their customer base.
The two major new features we just introduced were driven directly from customer requests: 1. To-dos on the calendar (never available in Classic, but one of the top requests of all time), and 2. Email-in (surprising number of requests + significantly better than Classic).
We’re working on a bunch of things right now – more is coming.
AC
on 02 May 12JF
When have you started implementing feature requests?
You’ve blogged in the past how you don’t listen to customers.
Tim Riley
on 02 May 12This feature is GREAT. Already used it five or six times today.
Just wondering: do you plan to expose forwarded emails via the bcx-api?
Alejandro Carrillo
on 02 May 12Great! really awesome feature!
James
on 02 May 12@Matt: Thanks for pointing that out! The lack of project templates in new Basecamp has been a big stumbling block for us. Emailing to-do lists will work just fine as a stop-gap measure.
For all those complaining there are more important features that should have been implemented first: more important to you. For my company, email integration is a huge, critically important, feature.
The new Basecamp isn’t as feature-complete as Classic (yet), but I am willing to go through some short-term pain to get the long-term benefits that a total re-design and re-thinking will bring. Thanks, 37signals!
Clive
on 02 May 12Hi, I was absolutely let-down when you didn’t think of this in the first place and made no bones about it publicly.
However, I would also want to say publicly a big thank you for putting this back in so quickly and improving it: the idea of creating To Dos via email is brilliant. This has certainly made me want to look at the new Basecamp again but perhaps I won’t be leaping in completely to begin with, just in case there are any teething issues.
Do I get to restart my free 3 month trial, as I stopped using it so quickly before?
Cheers guys
Clive
Axle Davids
on 02 May 12Stop teasing the 15% – please get time tracking going so we classic users can join the party!
Ariel
on 02 May 12YES! Awesome. This was the deal-breaker functionality that was missing from the new Basecamp.
For anyone who’s curious on how this gets used, I have a project that’s dedicated to managing a very large, extremely active online community. We use the “email to project” functions to notify moderators when a new forum thread needs their attention—the forum software emails the project, posting a new message, notifying mods, and creating a place to host a discussion if any moderation is needed on the thread.
Thanks, 37Signals! This is a critically important function for my business, and it’s much appreciated!!
Matt
on 02 May 12Thank you for ALL of these features, ESPECIALLY the email to Basecamp. LOVE the improvements.
Amy Clark
on 02 May 12This is awesome!! Such a huge timesaver for my team. Thank you!
KB
on 02 May 12For the love of DHH make it be tags/categories by next week or this whole deal is off. Cannot fathom how you launched without it.
Matthew Ellis
on 02 May 12@Kim Vigsbo: Why would they need to remember a different login for every project? Why wouldn’t they merge their different 37 signals IDs and use Launchpad? I’ve done this across companies and projects and it worked fine. For Basecamp Classic, I assume this process still works: http://bit.ly/IC6Ztu
Steve Homer
on 02 May 12Hi Guys – new features always welcome. The thing that is missing from the CLASSIC version is file organisation. Just uploading files into a random list instead of organised folders by type or category is a nightmare in the new version.
Morgan Howard
on 02 May 12Still on Basecamp classic. Any news on bringing back “time tracking”?
David Lawrence
on 02 May 12Working in Interactive and Web Production there are a lot of moving parts to the projects I work on.
I would love one extra MACRO level in Basecamp. Umbrella Projects, Meta Projects, whatever it might be called.
David
Lee D.
on 02 May 12The emails I get of your updates sound great and some of the new features look pretty useful. However, we aren’t able to migrate ANY of our new projects over since every project has some “private” items.
How much longer before we can migrate our projects over without restriction?
Paul C
on 02 May 12Finally! Thank you for this. I’ve been copy and pasting and dragging files between folders. This is far more efficient. Next:
1) There needs to be Private Discussions in the project for billing and other purposes.
2) There needs to be To Do templates. Having to retype 6 or 7 To Dos every single time for a cookie cutter project is mind-numbing.
Keep up the good work!
Don W
on 02 May 12I was reading over some of the comments above and felt to write in to respond to negative feedback. I’m a new user coming from another project management software. Al I can say is THANK YOU to signals for developing this amazing tool! Very worth the money and so user friendly, I think it’s incredible! Just sat with our admin team of 15 or so to show them the basics.
Yeah, so maybe there are some bells and whistles missing – they’ll come soon enough. Great job to the team who is continuing to develop this resource!
TJ
on 02 May 12Love the email feature! I’m using it to create to-do lists very quickly. Looking forward to more new features!
Champ
on 02 May 12Jason, regarding your reply: The two major new features we just introduced were driven directly from customer requests: 1. To-dos on the calendar (never available in Classic, but one of the top requests of all time), and 2. Email-in (surprising number of requests + significantly better than Classic).
I can’t be the only one that has asked for private messages on the new basecamp since day one can I? I know the topic of private messages doesn’t have to do with this specific feature release but, if you’re going to talk about what people have been asking for, I must say, Private messages must be up there as everyone that I know that uses basecamp has complained about the very same lack of feature.
Basecamp and the entire 37 signals suite have always prided themselves into keeping things simple and not chasing every request made by clients. I get it. However I would suggest that the less that you listen to people, the more bridge burning you’re doing, as those people who have patiently waited for you to implement some key features get fed up, move on and then talk to their peers (who they most likely influence) into not signing up for your product or leaving you altogether. Bad rep spreads quicker than good rep.
Ali
on 02 May 12Now only if I could send and receive emails from Basecamp my life would be complete! :)
Swat Khan
on 02 May 12This is a great addition. I’m a big fan of sending myself to do list or notes and then later adding it to Basecamp. You just saved me time because now I can email directly to Basecamp.
Love the software and I’m looking to expand my team and feel this will be a great value added tool for our business.
JF
on 02 May 12Champ: Yes, people are asking for private. We’re working on some ideas there. But not all features take the same amount of time to concept, design, develop, evaluate, and possibly release. What we’re not going to do is rush it and end up with an expedient solution that isn’t anywhere near as useful or well executed as it could be.
We’re pleased with how the to-dos on the calendar, email-in, and move items features turned out so we released those. The other stuff – and there’s lots of it – remains in the labs for now.
Jt
on 02 May 12Ive been missing this and looking around for it since the launch and now it’s finally here. This is mighty good.
Mike H.
on 03 May 12Thank you for implementing this! Not being able to forward emails and files has been the biggest downside for me to the new Basecamp. The fact that a notification isn’t sent to every single person in the project is the best part also. Now I can forward to my hearts content without annoying every person in the office with emails! The only thing left that needs to be done before officially moving the company over to the new Basecamp is private messages, files, and text documents. Unfortunately that one is a deal breaker as there is too much sensitive info that outside customers simply cannot see. Inviting customers to our projects is a large selling point for our company so until I feel comfortable doing it with the new Basecamp we will stick to the old one. The new Basecamp has a ton of potential though. Looking forward to when I can unleash all my projects to it instead of dabbling in it with a couple projects.
Alan
on 03 May 12Would love to see more iOS support with the new version of basecamp. Im always on the go and to have a decent iPhone and iPad app would be invaluable.
Aaron
on 03 May 12I like the email feature as a possibility for poor mans templates, but with the new MOVE feature, it would seem a closer workaround version to reality would be keeping one project with template lists in it and COPY/MOVE a certain list into your new project. We would just need the option to not remove the list from the template master-list project when we do the move. For me with many repetitive projects and the same person responsible on each project, this would be much better than emailing in a list of unassigned to do’s. Of course the next thing would be linked moving of the due dates because the repetitive projects have regular task intervals but the overall pattern starts at different times. I’m a fan of what you’re doing. You can never please everyone to the same level unless you make them all miserable, so thank you for the efforts!
Sam
on 03 May 12This feature is pretty killer for the specific ways we use Basecamp in my department but it’s missing just one more cog to become a fully usable solution for us. We need forwarded emails (or at least there subject lines) to be searchable from the current search box. Is there any plans to enable this?
Many thanks.
Ryan Evans
on 03 May 12The poor-man’s API is super useful. Using an automated recurring email plus this feature is bad ass for stuff that happens on a regular basis. If you use gmail, this is how you can do it…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FliZL8bpdQ0 Nicely done.
Sue Miley
on 03 May 12This feature is really important for true project management. As much as you want everyone to email through discussions, we will always receive an email about a project outside of basecamp.
This now allows us to post it with the project so that everyone has access to the communication and can refer back to it.
This is invaluable.
Thanks for adding it and please don’t listen to everyone here. The new basecamp is far superior….yes still hoping for a couple of features, but overall an even more usable tool!
Thanks!
JF
on 03 May 12it’s missing just one more cog to become a fully usable solution for us. We need forwarded emails (or at least there subject lines) to be searchable from the current search box. Is there any plans to enable this?
This should be working today.
alex
on 03 May 12Is there two way communication with Basecamp & email so that if there’s a task assigned inside Basecamp…
1 – person assigned with task is notified via email as well as anyone else who has requested notification for this kind of activity?
2 – is there a way for others to comment from email on a specific task and have it carry over into Basecamp and back to email?
JF
on 03 May 12Alex: Yes – when people are assigned a to-do in Basecamp they get an email. If they respond to that email it goes right into Basecamp as a comment. People can comment on messages, to-dos, files, text documents, and calendar events right from email.
Sam
on 04 May 12Thanks JF & Team, you just made my day!
INFOUND
on 04 May 12Thanks a lot.
Love the idea of emailing in photos right from the iPhone. That’s beautifully closing a gap between real notes and digital notes.
Thanks again, Alex
Jay Milton
on 05 May 12This is a great feature, but I already know what is going to happen. My team will use this feature to create new discussions when in fact there is already an existing discussion that deals with the same topic. (We have this problem already WITHOUT the new email-to-Basecamp feature). We end up having the same discussion in multiple locations in Basecamp.
I really wish you guys would create a way to move individual comments from one discussion thread (or to-do, or calendar item, etc.) to another thread.
If 37s could implement only one additional feature, this is the one I would ask for.
Nashir
on 07 May 12I love your idea. Many who want to take this feature I think they will get success.
Jean
on 07 May 12I was so missing this feature! I use this often, since almost no one else on my team has really taken the leap into Basecamp. Some people still use – (gasp!) paper and pen for their lists. I know – the horror!
Anyway, this is the only way I can keep my projects updated, other than cutting and pasting their emails into my project discussions.
THANK YOU for making it even better than the last version!
Ariel
on 07 May 12I was so excited about this new feature but the process for posting via email is so convoluted! I can’t believe every single email-to-project requires a secondary process of them saying who you want to be notified. This just blows my mind—you’ve basically taken a one-step process on the old Basecamp (send email to project, email becomes message sent to project members) into a multi-step confusion-fest (send email to project, get email back asking you to login and confirm who you want message sent to, THEN send message to project members).
So, so disappointed. I’ve been waiting for this feature for months, and it’s kind of a mess. :(
Christopher
on 08 May 12Any chance of some sort of overview flowchart or something that roadmaps ‘mobile Basecamp’?
Email sounds very powerful, invites to developers to build mobile interfaces sound great, Everest looks nice, 37signals’ has its own plans for mobile too. That’s all good – but could 37signals suggest a middle of the road way forward for middle of the road Basecamp users with smartphones? Is it email?
This discussion is closed.